Let’s assume that we have installed zsh and two versions of Java on our computer (Java 17, Java 11). To conveniently change the Java version, we can create a function in the .zsh file and just run a command that will be equal to the name of the function and we will be able to change it.
This is useful when we have multiple versions of Java installed on our computer and we want to switch between them easily. By creating a function in the .zsh file, we can avoid having to manually set the JAVA_HOME environment variable every time we want to switch between versions.
Normally, when installing Java, we add to the PATH environment variable this PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin. This means that depending on the value of JAVA_HOME we will use one version or another.
Therefore we would only have to:
- Edit .zsh file.
- Add at the end the following:
function java11(){
export JAVA_HOME='/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-11.0.12.jdk/Contents/Home'
java -version
}
function java17(){
export JAVA_HOME='/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/azul-17.0.2/Contents/Home'
java -version
}- Save it.
With this change, if we execute in a terminal java17 we will put Java 17 and java11 we will have Java 11 configured.